Mollys journal

After finally finishing my flat drawings, pattern cutting and creating my toile I started on my final design. this meant cutting out my pattern pieces again but with my chosen fabric, boiled wool.

once I had cut my pieces out, I sewed the dress together, but without the sleeves on as I wanted to spray paint onto the dress before hand.

As spray painting free handed would cause thick lines I created stencils out of cardboard so that the lines/ patterns would be crisp and slick. After spray painting I started on creating the sleeves.

Firstly, I gathered the end of the sleeves to create the frills and then attached them to the other half which would then be sewed onto the dress. I kept the frills quite small at top as this meant the sleeve length would be fuller and longer, which I wanted.

Once the dress was all sewn together, i wasn’t too keen on how long the dress was. To solve this problem, I decided to measure the length of how short I wanted it and cut off the excess material and re sewed the bottom bits to secure the dress.

Looking at my overall design, I am pleased with the outcome as it looks wacky and different, which is what I wanted to portray through my garment and book.

After a while of drawing several designs I finally decided on what design I would create onto my dress. However, as I had so many ideas it took me a little longer than I hoped on deciding which design I would use.

From my 7 final designs I decided to go with the design which had an enlarged graffiti face on the front which would represent me.

I decided to go with this design as I felt it expressed me as a designer the most and was the most abstract one, which I wanted. For the graffiti face I wanted to use bold, bright colours whilst incorporating my facial features/ colour of hair and eye colour.

To create the face on the front I would use spray paints and handmade stencils to get the clean, sleek patterns. As I am going to be creating a face, I didn’t want to add anything else to the dress except the frilled sleeves as I thought it would be too much.

 

After cutting out my pattern pieces for my final design, I had to create my toile to see what it would look like before cutting into my felted fabric. It was a good idea to create my toile as the pattern pieces I first created did not fit the mannequin meaning I had gone wrong somewhere. From this I was able to re-create my pattern pieces and toile.

Looking at the dress, I could see it fitted well together which meant I could now create the frilled sleeves. I found this pattern piece the hardest to create as I had to make it much bigger than a normal sleeve. However, after finishing the pattern piece the sleeves looked really good on the design. This meant I was able to start cutting out my boiled wool fabric for the real outfit.

Throughout the weeks of doing digital I have been able to learn many ways of how to use photoshop whilst bringing my research project into it.

Learning to use photoshop has definitely helped my confidence in the digital side of fashion as I’ve been taught how to create my specific model and create mood boards. For my digital model, I wanted to use Cara Delevingne’s face as I thought her unusual look would be ideal in complimenting my design.

Creating the model was quite challenging at first as I hadn’t used photoshop in a long time, and of course the techniques are a little confusing, but once understanding what to do I found it enjoyable to create, yet a little bit annoying.

However, the mood boards were definitely easier to create and much more fun to do as I was putting all my inspirations and favourite colours into it so express my ideas and potential final design.

 

Over the past few weeks my research book has developed more and more, focusing on specific topics involving architecture.

I wanted to focus more on graffiti, street wear and abstract designs as i feel as though I lean more to them in my fashion sense, which I wanted to portray throughout my book and my final design. looking at various designers, graffiti artists, clothing and taking primary photos of these  I have been able to design my final design within my book.

My design is is quite flared and big as thats the style I wanted to go for. I decided I wanted the dress and the flared sleeves to be all black in boiled wool fabric as it has a textured feel to it, referencing the texture of a building, the sleeves will also be gathered at the elbows and flare out to the bottom. However, as the whole dress is black, I was thinking of adding a green neon stitch into the design, whether it would be around the neck line, bottom lining and the ends of the sleeve to enhance the dress a bit more.

within the first few weeks of Uni, we have been focusing on developing our research books and creating a garment which would be assessed on.

for my research book I wanted to focus on architecture as it meant I could look at various different types of architecture whether it was old buildings, streets, texture graffiti or many other things.

As the weeks have gone by, I have had many discussions with my tutors about my work and what things I can add into my book, such as fabric samples, manipulating fabrics and some drawings for my potential design. from these discussions I have been able to see more clearly on what sort of design I want at the end of this project.

so far, I feel as though uni itself has been quite challenging for me, but was the weeks and project is going by I have enjoyed it more and more.

The assessed project we were focusing on for the past few weeks was this dress shown above. This task was interesting as we were able to get experience with creating our own pattern pieces, working on industrial machines and learn new techniques.

Whilst creating this design, I found having experience with dressmaking came in handy as it meant I was able to understand the techniques more than if I didn’t know what I was doing. Having mini tutorials for each step was also useful to me as I was able to see the steps visually which made more sense.

This task was also quite fun as everyone was able to help each other and get to know one another better as we were all working on the same garment, which defiantly helped me to feel more comfortable with the course and speaking to other people. overall, I think my garment turned out well as it looked very similar to the one we had to create, even though some of the darts didn’t line up exactly, and I was actually pleased with the outcome.

 

My name is Molly Ashby and I am eighteen years old. I come from a small town in Wales called Abergavenny. During sixth form, one of my subjects I studied was Art and Design. In this subject I decided to focus on fashion, developing my knowledge and skills whilst creating high-end futuristic garments. In this subject I was able to push myself by trying out new techniques which I had never done before. From this I designed and created many potential designs and fabric pieces, expressing myself.  It also opened my eye to the surroundings around me and how I could manipulate them into fashion. 

Beginning my chosen university course, Fashion Design I did not know what to expect except what I was told during my interview, I also found the transition quite difficult to adjust to. During our induction week, we began to create designs inspired by the theme ‘shapes’. My chosen shape was a circle, at first I found this shape very challenging to manipulate into a design using paper as I did not have the best motivation to start with. However, once playing around with the paper and beginning to choose my fabrics, the piece came together slowly. Already from this creative day, I was able to overcome the obstacles and create  a futuristic design. 

At the start of the induction week, I was quite unsure on whether this course was for me as it all felt so different and quite nerve wracking. However, as the week has gone by I have become more confident and comfortable with the course. I am also looking to gain the skills to create something thats never been created before whilst learning and undertaking new skills. I am also excited to face new challenges in the future, whether it be dealing with the course work or finding inspiration to create original designs. The main thing that I have enjoyed so far is making several new friends and beginning to get to know them better. 

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